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Google notifies local business owners to update their Google Places Listing

Google has warned several business owners to update their Google+ business listings before February 21, 2013. This means if you want your company to keep appearing on Google Maps then you need to make sure that you comply with the new guidelines and verify your listing. The interesting part is that many enterprise owners are perplexed with this email notification and many considered it to be nothing but spam. However, Google has explicitly informed business owners through this email to update and verify their Google+ business profiles.

Action Required: You have 3 weeks to save your Google Places Listing

For those you haven’t received this email need not worry, since this can be done the easy way as well. You need to login to your profile at Google’s Places for Business and review your information. If there are any changes needed then you can update those sections before the final step of the process that is clicking the “Submit” button. Voila! Work finished. For those still wondering about the notification, this email notification has been sent with a subject line – “Action Required: You have 3 weeks to save your Google Places Listing”.

As per Jade Wang, Google’s Business Community Manager, business owners would be required to do this process for all of their listings in Places for Business by February 2, 2013 in order to stay in the database of Google Maps. Reportedly, those failing to do this would be required to add their business listing and undergo PIN verification again on Google’s Places for Business account. Experts believe that this is just another new Google way of removing spam from search results and most of them actually applauded the simple tactic to get rid of worthless data from Google Maps.

On the official Google Groups business discussion board, Jade Wang was quoted as saying, “We are making some changes to Google Places for Business and Google Maps so we can continue providing people with the best experience when they’re looking for local businesses. As part of this process, we’re asking business owners to review and confirm some of the information in their Google Places accounts so we can keep showing it to Google users. We know this will be a few extra steps for merchants, and we apologize for any inconvenience and thank you for your time.” Evidently, Wang’s tone suggests that Google is working from all corners to provide better search results and is immensely dedicated towards filtering out the spammy results from its Maps application.

Creating a new Google+ Local Page and changes in the new setup

Further, Wang has also informed on the Google Product Forums > Google and Your Business discussion board, about the second change in verification process of a new Google+ local page. The new business owners who want to create a new Google+ local listing are required to confirm their profiles through a PIN verification process. Further, enterprise owners can also see their Google+ listing and profile features even before authentication. However, the listing will go live only after the page has been confirmed after PIN verification. This PIN is either received via post sent to the enterprise location or communicated through their business contact number.

Wang further quoted, “If you’re creating a listing in the new Places for Business dashboard, now, you won’t have to wait to complete PIN verification before you can see the +page, for most businesses. Just follow the link from your dashboard to see the new page. You will be able to use Google+ social features on this unverified page, but please note — you still need to complete PIN verification before the page will start showing up in Google Maps and across other Google properties.”